Strong and Sexy (Sky High Air #2)(40)

Or her equally invisible mystery sniper.

But someone just as dangerous—Shayne.





Chapter 14




S lipping down onto the couch, Dani found herself stuck in place like a deer caught in headlights.

“Dani?”

“She’s not here.” Sinking farther into herself, she closed her eyes. “She…left the building.”

“Uh-huh.” Shayne shut the door. She heard the lock click into place.

“Go away.”

“Not until I leave a message. Tell Dani that Shayne came by.”

“Shayne? The pilot? The, what did the business card read, president of operations?”

He sighed. “Saw that, did you?”

“Hard to miss. It was embossed in gold.”

“Maddie’s doing.”

“President of operations, Shayne. Not just a pilot. Not by a long shot.”

“There’s other things to talk about,” he said. “Like why the hell is your door unlocked?”

Scrunched down as far as possible, the ice cream and spoon still in her hand, she was rooted to the spot by several facts.

One, she was wearing huge pity-party sweats.

Two, she’d gone through nearly half the ice cream already and the sugar high was quickly turning to wooziness, a direct cause of number three.

Which was why at just the sound of his irritated voice, her entire body had gone on high red-alert status, including nipples hardening, belly quivering, and a whole host of other things too.

Good God, she was worse than Pavlov’s dog. “You’re supposed to knock.”

“I did.”

“And wait for a response!” Craning her neck, she took a peek. She couldn’t help herself.

Yep.

There he was, in the flesh. Wearing his pilot gear, which consisted of blue trousers, a white button-down shoved up at the elbows with Sky High’s logo on a hard pec, and aviator sunglasses, which at the sight of her he pulled off. That meant that those piercing light brown eyes landed directly on her without any barrier.

Great. So much better.

Except not. With a groan, she sank farther down in the couch and tried to vanish.



Shayne frowned at the couch. What the hell was she doing? Besides avoiding his calls.

Then the couch spoke. “Why are you here?”

“Good question.”

“If you don’t know—”

“Oh, I know why I’m here. Why the hell didn’t you return my calls?”

“Well—”

“And why the hell is your door unlocked?”

“You already asked that.”

“Still waiting for an answer that makes sense.”

“Fine. I got a little distracted.”

Tired of talking to the couch, he came around the front of the couch to face her. She wore green monster face paint on her face. Her hair had gone wild on top of her head, though he could see another yellow number-two pencil in there trying to hold it all together. Her entire lower body had been swallowed whole by a pair of sweats that looked like they might belong on a four-hundred-pound rapper. And then there was the ice cream, and not just a bowl either, but an entire gallon.

That was some serious ice cream consumption. “Bad time?” he asked.

“Yes, actually.” She bristled a bit, which looked comical in green. “I’m…” She shoved the wooden spoon and ice cream behind her back, as if he hadn’t already seen them. “Busy.”

“Ah.”

At that, she lifted her chin, playing the I-don’t-care-that-I-look-like-shit game. Good tactic, one he might have taken himself, though he doubted he’d have looked even half as adorable as she while playing it.

“Very busy,” she added.

A drop of the green mask fell from her nose and plopped to her camisole top.

“Very, very busy,” she added, her voice a bit smaller now as she tried to surreptitiously rub the green into her sweats.

So damned adorable. “I can see that.” He said this with an utterly straight face, but she rolled her eyes, set down the ice cream and the spoon, and got to her feet.

“I wasn’t expecting company,” she said pointedly, looking at the door.

“You didn’t return my phone calls.”

“No, I didn’t.” She took in his expression and shook her head. “That’s never happened to you before, has it?”

He rubbed his jaw while trying to decide the right answer to that.

She laughed again, then put her hands to her face. “This is drying. Don’t make me laugh, I’ll crack.”

In his pocket, his cell phone vibrated, but he ignored it. He didn’t have a flight, and everything else could wait. “You smell like avocados.”

“Why are you here again?”

“Are you kidding me? Last night you thought you saw a murder.”

“I’m sure that happens.”

“No, actually. It doesn’t happen. Then you had someone in this very apartment.”

“I might have been mistaken about that part.”

“And you were shot at. You weren’t mistaken about that.”

She went on the defensive, in her big sweats and green face mask. “How do you know they weren’t shooting at you, Shayne? You ever think of that?”